Skype doesn't actually own all the patents to its tech - that's what scuppered a potential deal with Google last year.

Valuation is huge - it's more than double what it was valued at last year, and in the meantime it's not really made any more money. I'd say that this is MS spending over the odds to try and keep all those business users and enterprises that spend so much money on MS Office by wrapping VOIP into the package.

Can't really see the value of adding Skype into XBox etc - bit gimmicky if you ask me.

Ultimately, companies are only worth what someone is willing to pay. We'll have to see how this pans out, but does seem rather a lot for a service that has managed to get only about 5% of users to pay anything at all for.